


Second Chances

by Queen_Lightning



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-25 00:46:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20715302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Lightning/pseuds/Queen_Lightning
Summary: This was originally posted in Tumblr as part of a five-word prompt ask.The prompt requested was: Great.  Perfect.  Nice.  Fuck this.





	1. Chapter 1

You sat in the cool interior of your car, waiting for your boyfriend to finish up his physical therapy. He would be a long road back, but he was making great progress already.

You had met Nick Amaro three years ago when you transferred into SVU from Major Case. Back then, he had been married to Maria and partnered up with Olivia Benson, and you had been chronically single and partnered with Fin Tutuola. You had managed to keep an admirably professional relationship with Nick, even joining him and his wife for a dinner party at their house once, but when his life fell apart with appalling force, you had done what you always do: you swept in and helped him put it back together.

When he was struggling in his marriage with Maria and dealing with the duel issues of her being stationed overseas and his own bitter jealousy, you were there to reassure him that no matter what happened, he had a wonderful daughter.

When he was struggling to come to terms with his son, Gilberto, and the crushing guilt that came with not being in his life, you were there to reassure him that the important thing was that he was there for Gil now.

When he was struggling with his undefinable relationship with your coworker, Amanda, you were there to reassure him (through clenched teeth and carefully chosen words) that he couldn’t save everyone, and maybe Amanda needed to hit rock bottom before she got help.

You had loved Nick within moments of meeting him, but you never acted on it and it always felt like innocent puppy love anyway. For a while, he was married, and then separated, and then divorced, and then hooking up with Amanda. The whole time, you loved him from afar and supported him as a friend and just chalked the whole situation up to unrequited love.

It wasn’t until you were paired up on a case regarding a future monster, a man who had a torture room built into his home, that you became more than friends. Nick had reacted badly to the man being acquitted, punching him and getting arrested for assault. You helped bail him out shortly thereafter, and that night, you and Nick hooked up after he reached for you like a man who was drowning.

To you, it wasn’t hooking up, which made it sound casual and nonchalant. To you, it was the culmination of more than a year of repressed feelings and one-sided ardor. 

You assumed that Nick was just blowing off steam, proverbially speaking, but he kept coming over to your apartment, kept spending time with you. It morphed from just sex into dinner dates and lingering walks in the park and the occasional game at Yankee Stadium. If he never said “I love you,” it was likely due to his abominable track record with women. 

_He’ll say it someday_, you reasoned with yourself. _Give him time_.

Even when he was seriously injured in a courthouse shooting, a shot to the liver and one to the knee…even when you were there by his side, grasping his warm hand as he drifted in and out of consciousness…even as you smoothed his hair away from his forehead and soothed him as he wept about his police career. Even then, though – he still didn’t say it.

_Someday_, you thought.

He was released from the hospital, and you moved him into your building because it had an elevator and a nice shower with a low step in – perfect for his continued recovery. You used up some of your personal days to help drive him to doctor’s appointments and therapy. Nick always thanked you profusely, pulling you in for fierce kisses while proclaiming that he didn’t deserve you. Then he’d get a faraway look in his eyes, and you wondered what he was thinking.

When you caught him working through his finances one night, and when you noted how he hid his papers from you when you walked in, you wondered even more. And when you saw a tab on his browser history about engagement ring values, you felt a pleasant churn in your gut.

So you waited for what came next, and in the meantime, you waited in your car for him to finish his therapy.

He exited the building twenty minutes later, still on crutches and with a fistful of papers clenched in his hand. Your inclination was to rush out and greet him, open the car door for him, but you knew that he hated feeling useless, so you waited while he hobbled himself to the car and climbed in.

“Good appointment?” you asked, flashing him a bright smile. He turned and smiled back at you.

“I’m officially done,” he replied. He held up his sheaf of papers and showed you his at-home exercises. “And I’ll probably be off these crutches in a week after that, once the final stitches come out.”

“That’s great!” you exclaimed. You pulled out into traffic and drove home, enjoying Nick’s sunny demeanor. The windows were down and a nice breeze was ruffling his hair, now longer than he usually wore it when he was on duty. “You’ll be back to chasing down perverts in no time.”

“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t say more. 

It was two days later that he pulled you aside to talk to you. He was sitting on the couch and called you over to sit beside him. He took your hand in his own and looked at you with those big, brown eyes that you could get lost in.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said with a slight smile. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me. You’re the glue that’s held me together the past year…”

You interrupted him. “I’d do it again, Nick. You know I love you.” You noted the slight flinch on his face when you said it and frowned. 

“I know,” he said, and he seemed like he was choosing his words carefully. “And you know that I care about you too.”

There it was. Your stomach dropped and you felt a hectic flush break out across your face and neck. The giddy anticipation of being proposed to – you hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the evidence was all there, he was shopping for rings, and you were a detective, for heaven’s sake, it all made sense – disappeared. 

If he couldn’t respond that he loved you too now, he never would. Despite the evidence, you had misread the conclusion.

“I’m not returning to the NYPD,” he said, and he squeezed your hand lightly. “I’m…I’m going to move to California. To be near Zara and Gil.” You pulled your hand away from his, and he added quietly, “I wanted you to know first, before I tell Liv and the rest of the squad.”

A small part of you, a stubbornly optimistic, stupid part of you thought that the next sentence out of his mouth would be a plea for you to join him on the west coast. But that part of you was, well, _stupid_.

“I can never thank you enough…” he repeated, but you refused to look at him, and he trailed off uncomfortably. There was a long, heavy silence.

“I was never going to be enough for you, was I?” you finally asked. You weren’t angry – that would come later, and it would last a long time, but you didn’t know that yet. You just felt drained. Defeated. “All the love and support, all the times I was there for you…it still wasn’t enough.”

Nick started to shake his head, and you could see him trying to think of something soothing that was still the truth, but you continued.

“I guess at least Maria was smart enough to move on. Amanda was smart enough to move on. I’m just the idiot who sat around and waited, thought that if I held on long enough and was there for you, you’d see the real me.”

Nick placed his hand on your knee, patting it gently. “I do see the real you,” he said softly. “You are amazing.”

“But not amazing enough for you.”

Nick sighed. “**This isn’t what I wanted**. I never wanted to be divorced, a father to two kids with two different women, starting a new career mid-life.” He sighed again, heavier. “And I never wanted to lead you on, but you’re so…so _you_. So accommodating. So easy-going.”

You scoffed bitterly. “So stupid. So blind.” You pushed his hand off of your knee and stood up. “So willing to believe that you were engagement ring shopping.”

Nick sat up, startled. “When did you see that?”

You shrugged. “You were in the shower, and I got online to order dinner. It was an open tab.” You glanced at him and noted the irritation on his face. “I wasn’t snooping, Nick. You left it out there for anyone to see.”

“I’m sorry you saw that,’ he replied as realization dawned across his face. “You must have been thinking…” He trailed off, clearly uncomfortable, then dropped his head in shame. “When Maria and I divorced, she sold her engagement ring.”

“So?”

“So.” He didn’t want to finish, but you held him with the force of your gaze. Let him be uncomfortable, uneasy for once. “So, I wanted to find a similar ring…for when I propose to her again.” He said the last part so softly that you could hardly make it out, but the message landed like a clanging church bell all the same. 

You nodded curtly and walked over to the door, grabbing your keys and phone. 

“We’ve been talking for a while, Y/F/N,” he said after your retreating form. “It’d be best for Zara if we…” 

You didn’t catch the rest of it. You were already out the door, down the hallway, and outside. If you could, you would have walked forever, as far from California as possible, up the east coast, through New England and up into Canada until the coastline gave out and you could walk into the surf and let the Atlantic pull you into its chilly embrace.

Instead, you walked to Central park. And when you returned to your apartment late that night, Nick was already gone. He was probably at his mother’s house, but it didn’t really matter.

He had never really been there to begin with.


	2. Chapter 2

You only saw Nick one last time, when he came into the precinct to empty his desk and his locker. You made yourself unavailable to talk, calling down to the lab and remaining on hold for long time that would normally infuriate you. Nick lingered around your desk for a bit, but you only shrugged and mouthed “on hold.” You didn’t want to hear his empty words, and he eventually left. Once he did, you hung up your phone, and when you looked around the bullpen, you noticed Sonny watching you.

“Everything okay?” he asked, and you nodded and shrugged at the same time, as if to say, _whatever_.

Nick only tried to call you once after that, and you let the call go to voicemail. He left a message, but you never heard it. You just deleted it and tried to forget about him.

You had a minor in psychology, so you were well acquainted with the stages of grief and all the theories about grieving. You mainly bounced between anger and denial, skipping the bargaining stage altogether. You didn’t pray and barely believed in god at all, seeing what you saw every day at work. If there was a higher power, you weren’t going to waste your breath on bargaining for someone like Nick Amaro. If anything, you’d send a prayer for Maria: you had zero animosity for the woman, and you hoped she would be able to find happiness, considering how she was tethered to Nick for at least as long as Zara was a minor. 

You cleaned your apartment from top to bottom with the dedication of a career criminal erasing evidence. You wanted every microscopic trace of Nick out of your life. You gathered up everything he left behind: a t-shirt, a baseball cap, half a stick of deodorant, and a paperback thriller with its spine cracked and broken. You tossed everything except the book – you shoved that in a tiny library outside a bodega near your house. 

You spent time at the NYPD gym, you poured yourself into you work, and you made sure that you were completely exhausted by the end of each day so that you could sleep without dreams. But you still dreamed sometimes.

You grieved and raged in your own way, but you kept it private. You took a great deal of pride in your ability to stay professional at work – you never cried, you never yelled or lost your temper. You were a steady, even-keeled presence in a precinct full of passion and strong personalities.

For the most part, none of your coworkers even remarked about Nick leaving. They knew you’d dated, but aside from a few sympathetic glances in the beginning, they left you alone. 

Except for Sonny.

You caught him, more than once, watching you from across the bullpen. You begrudgingly admitted that he was handsome, especially once he lost that awful mustache he had in the beginning, and you readily admitted that he was a good detective. 

He watched you, but you couldn’t read the expression on his face when you caught him. He didn’t have his usual hang-dog look like when a particularly sad case came through. He didn’t look angry. You couldn’t quite place it, but if you stared back at him too long, his ears would turn an amusing shade of pink and he’d duck his head.

You were a great detective, but every detective had blind spots. Years later, you’d laugh and tell people that the evidence – solid stuff, not circumstantial – had been right in front of you, but you had missed it anyway. But that was years away, and right now, you were nursing a wounded heart and an even more wounded ego. 

So when Sonny stared at you with his big blue eyes, when he placed a cup of coffee on your desk without a comment, when he offered you the first pick of cannoli from the box he brought in, you just shrugged and thought, “Sonny is just being Sonny.”

The day had started terribly, and you would have just stayed home and rode it out from the safety of your couch. You had to testify early though, so you had to try and deal with the stuff the universe was throwing at you.

First, when you sorted through your mail from the previous few days, you found a few errant pieces belonging to Nick that had somehow slipped through the post office’s forwarding system. Junk mail, mostly, but one glossy card from a national jewelry chain caught your eye. On the front, a picture of a happy, perfect couple. The man on one knee, the woman caught in happy surprise. The back of the card listed some new diamond line promising “an engagement ring as brilliant as her!”

You tore it into a million pieces, slicing a particularly nasty papercut along the crease of your thumb that burned every time you flexed your hand.

Second, the NYPD gym was closed – water main issues – so you didn’t get your usual cardio relief before dawn.

Third, traffic was a nightmare.

Fourth, you were in your courtroom suit, which was sharp and stylish, which meant it wasn’t comfortable like your usual work outfits.

You were just irritated, and every little thing was piling up. You took a deep breath and poured yourself a cup of coffee in the SVU breakroom, willing yourself to calm down. You couldn’t take the stand so angry – Barba was good, but he couldn’t fix a detective that came across as irate and hostile.

You added an obscene amount of sugar to your coffee, then turned away from the counter to return to your desk. Instead, you turned smack into Sonny, who had crept up on you like some slender Italian-American ghost without a sound.

You yelped as your coffee exploded against you, searing your hand. You jumped backwards, cracking your hip against the counter and yelped again at the bolt of pain that radiated down your leg and up your waist.

“Sorry!” Sonny said. He held his hands out to help but didn’t know what to do so he just kept them out in supplication. 

You shook droplets of cooling coffee from your hand and then looked down your front. Your suit jacket and pants were mostly unscathed, but your snowy white blouse had a massive stain on it. You glanced at the clock on the wall; you didn’t have time to go home and change, but it didn’t matter anyway – your dry cleaning hadn’t been picked up in weeks, and you didn’t have any other suitable shirt at home.

You gritted your teeth. “**Great. Perfect. Nice.**” You crumpled the mostly empty paper cup in your hand and threw it into the garbage. “**Fuck this.**”

“Sorry,” Sonny repeated, and you saw how aghast he looked. He reached past you and grabbed a handful of napkins, then made as if to daub at your chest, then blushed, then handed them to you instead. You took them and tossed them into the garbage too.

“I have to fucking testify in less than an hour,” you told him. 

“Sorry,” he said a third time.

You shook your head and sighed. “Are you a ninja, Carisi? You purposely creep up on me to scare me?” You glanced up at him and saw the distress in his face, so you sighed again. “It’s okay. It happens. It’s just been one of those days, and it’s not even eight yet.” 

“Do you have a spare shirt?” he asked, sheepish. He ran his hand over the back of his neck nervously.

You shook your head. “My dry cleaner has all my stuff. I’m a chronic drop-off that never picks up. Besides, with traffic, I’d never make it home and back in time.”

“Can Barba move you to later in the day?”

“No,” you said, shaking your head again. “I’m the last witness he had to call.” You gave a bitter laugh. “Save the best for last, I guess. Nothing says ‘professional’ like a giant coffee stain.”

His face lit up. “Maybe not. Come on,” he said, and he motioned for you to follow him to the locker room. He spun the dial on his locker and opened it with a clang. He pulled out a crisp white men’s Oxford shirt and handed it to you.

You smiled despite your disastrous day so far. “I don’t think we’re the same size, Carisi.”

“Try it on,” he urged you. “It might be a little tight across the…” He trailed off and his ears turned crimson, and you caught his meaning. “But under the jacket, it might be okay. Better than a coffee stain, at least.”

You nodded and waited for him to leave, but he just turned his back instead, so you turned your back to him too. You eased out of your jacket and then removed your wet blouse, tossing it on the bench in front of the lockers. Then you put on Sonny’s shirt. It was long, and the sleeves came halfway down your hands. And Sonny had been right – it did strain a bit along your breasts, and you blushed a bit at this for some reason.

“Alright,” you said, and Sonny turned around and appraised you. You watched his eyes drift over you, faltering for a moment over your chest, then he nodded.

“I look ridiculous,” you said, but he reached out and plucked your jacket from the bench.

“Nah,” he said. He held out your jacket and helped slip it over your arms. “You’d look great in anything.” You knitted your brows at the comment, but you had your back to him so he didn’t see it. You turned back around to face him.

“Tuck in the shirt,” he ordered, and you did, stuffing it under your waistband and smoothing it out. It already looked better.

“Here,” he continued, and he took first one of your hands and then the next. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, fussing with them until they were mainly tucked under the cuffs of your jacket and only a thin margin of white stuck out. You watched his face as he helped, his brow creased in concentration. “Much better,” he finally said. He took a step back and looked you over again.

“Courtroom ready?” you asked, and Sonny smiled.

“Well, no one can compare to Barba strutting around in his three-piece suits, but you’re a close second.”

“Thanks, Sonny,” you said. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“It’s okay. I know you’ve been having a rough time.” He caught the startled look on your face at this, and he tried to clarify. “With Nick and everything. I mean, you know.” He finished lamely and rubbed the back of his neck again.

“Is it that obvious?”

He shrugged. “Nah, but it still can’t be easy.” He cleared his throat and you noticed a flush creeping up his neck from under his collar, but he didn’t say anything else. 

You glanced down at your watch and noted the time. “I have to head over to the courthouse,” you said. You smiled at him and thanked him again. “I promise I’ll get your shirt back to you as quick as I can.”

He waved you off, and you started to leave the locker room, but he called out after you. “Nick was an idiot,” he blurted. When you turned and looked over your shoulder at him, his face was bright pink, and he couldn’t quite look you in the eye. “I mean…I…a lot of guys would have never left you behind,” he stammered.

You looked at him a long moment before you smiled at him. You thought about the past few months, and before them, the time with Nick. You decided to take a chance. “Well, if you know one of those guys, shoot me his number,” you said. He looked up at you, surprised, before he smiled back at you.

“I might know someone,” he replied. His blue eyes were bright, and you felt your terrible day – and terrible past few months – begin to loosen their grip on you. You nodded at him, then turned and left. You grabbed your purse and headed to the elevator bank, and you didn’t even make it out of the building before your phone dinged. You fished it out of your pocket and read the message, from Sonny.

It was a phone number that, if you checked it against Sonny’s saved contact information, you knew would match. Underneath it, a message:

_He’s free this Saturday evening, and I bet he’s already crazy about you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted in Tumblr as part of a five-word prompt ask.
> 
> The prompt requested was: Great. Perfect. Nice. Fuck this.


	3. Chapter 3

You testified that morning, and then you ate lunch at a deli near the courthouse. After you finished, you took a quick walk around a nearby park to clear your head. You decided to call the number that Carisi had texted you. It rang twice, and then Carisi’s unmistakable Staten Island drawl answered.

“Oh, sorry,” you said. “This is Y/F/N. Sonny Carisi gave me your number.”

There was a exhalation on the other end of the line as Sonny laughed, but he played along. “Sure, yeah. This is Dominick. Sonny said you might be calling.”

The two of you joked back and forth, but finally settled on a date for Friday night at 8. He named the place and before you signed off, you playfully asked how you would recognize him.

“I’ll be the tall guy in grey,” he said. “And I’ll have a flower with me. For you.”

* * *

The week absolutely dragged. Sonny never felt that Friday would come. 

At least he got to see you at the precinct. The defense crumbled pretty quickly on your case, and the jury came back with guilty counts on all charges. Sonny loved how your face lit up when the squad congratulated you. It had been so long since he’d seen you smile like that – not since Nick left, in fact.

Sonny had liked you immediately, and it only was a short distance between “like” and “love.” Of course, you had been in love with Nick, and then you were with Nick, so Sonny had to make do with just watching you from across the bullpen and sometimes joking with you when you worked a case together. He tried to do nice things for you when he could, without drawing too much attention to it. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Nick treated you terribly. Everyone seemed to see it except you. He wished you could see that you deserved better. 

When Nick left, Sonny felt conflicted. He was happy that he was out of your life finally, but he hated to see you upset. You hid it really well, but Sonny had spent months watching you and could see the pain written across your face. He saw the way your shoulders slumped at your desk. He wished he could do more than bring you coffee, though it did seem to help.

He wanted to kick himself when he spilled coffee down your front, but something changed in you in those few moments together in the locker room. You had looked at him in a way you never had previously, and before he could stop himself, he blurted out the sentiments he had kept close to his heart. After that, it was like a chain-reaction: he “gave” you his number, you called him, and you had a date set for Friday.

Which never felt like it would come.

But it eventually did. At five, you shut down your laptop and waved goodbye, wishing everyone a good weekend. You didn’t pay any particular attention to Sonny, acting like it was just another day. Sonny, for his part, felt nervous, but he just nodded at you as you left. Then he waited ten minutes and dashed home so that he could shower, change, and meet you at the restaurant with plenty of time to spare.

He got there twenty minutes early, but you were already there, sitting on a bench outside and waiting. He saw you first and had a moment to admire you. You were in a simple dress, navy blue with polka dots that looked sort of retro. Your hair was down, but you kept the look casual with a pair of white Keds. You looked like the girl next door, if the girl next door could run down a fleeing perp and cuff him.

Sonny could watch you forever, but after a moment, you turned and caught him out of the corner of your eye. You smiled at him, and he held up the single red rose he’d brought along, and you smiled wider.

* * *

You stood up and waited for him to join you before you held out your hand. “You must be Dominick,” you said with a smile. He grinned back at you and shook your hand.

“Shall we?” he said, and he held open the door and led you inside. 

It was a little hole in the wall place, not much to look at from the outside, but it was cozy inside. Your table was in the corner, and you sat down across from Sonny. A waiter came over and took your drink order, and you browsed the menu while stealing glances at Sonny over the laminated page.

He always looked great at work, but you thought you might like slightly-casual date Sonny a shade better. He was in a checked shirt that brought out his eyes, paired with dark jeans and a grey blazer. His hair was still perfectly gelled, but somehow looked less stiff. You didn’t really understand men’s hair products. 

The waiter brought your drinks and you each ordered dinner. You each took a nervous sip of your respective drinks.

“So,” you finally said, breaking the awkward silence. Sonny said, “So,” at the same time, and you both laughed.

“Sonny told me that you’re a detective,” he said. “How’s that going?”

You took another sip of your mojito. “Well, _Dominick_, it’s okay,” you played along. “It pays the bills.”

“I bet you have some really interesting co-workers,” he replied around the rim of his beer glass. “Probably some really smart, handsome ones.”

You shrugged and pretended to think about it. “I guess. There’s this one guy, kind of annoying. He is really good at his job…”

“Sounds terrible.”

You nodded. “It is. Makes me look bad when he puts in all this extra effort.”

Sonny smiled. “The nerve of him.”

“And worse than that, he’s super earnest. It’s like, ‘this is just a nine-to-five job, guy.’ This is a run-out-the-clock type of job. But he’s all concerned about justice.”

This made Sonny chuckle. “I hate to think that my tax dollars are going to some guy who’s actually working too hard.”

“I know!” You threw up your hands in mock exasperation. “He’s just the worst.”

The waiter brought out a basket of bread, and you reached for a slice, chewing it carefully. Sonny took his own slice and tore off the crust into tiny pieces.

“This guy have any redeeming qualities?” he asked, and despite the game, you saw the hopeful gleam in his eyes.

“Sure.” You tapped the table with each point you made. “He’s great with the victims, his ego isn’t oversized so he can admit when he’s wrong. He passed the bar but stayed with SVU when he could be off making big, lawyer money. He’s patient.” You glanced up and saw his ears turning that adorable pink shade, and you wondered idly if Sonny had a praise-kink. You weren’t the betting type, but you would wager he did. 

“And he _is _really smart and handsome, especially since he lost his ‘70’s porn mustache.”

Sonny choked on his sip of beer, and his blush extended across his entire face. “My ma said it made me look distinguished, I’ll have you know.” 

“That’s because your ma can’t tell her son that he looks like a guy who drives around the mall parking lot in a white van with blacked out windows.”

He shook his head sadly, but you couldn’t miss his happy smile. 

* * *

Dinner sped by in a blink, the two of you switching between the pretense of not knowing each other and then chatting like old friends. You marveled at how natural it felt. 

You always liked Sonny; all the stuff you had said about him was the truth. He was a likable guy. If Nick hadn’t been in the picture, you wouldn’t have had romantic thoughts about Sonny anyway: you would have assumed that he had a girlfriend or boyfriend, because he was a catch.

He wasn’t like Nick at all. He didn’t grumble about any exes or complain about the laundry list of grunges he had against the NYPD. You didn’t have to read his mood carefully to see if you could tease him or if he needed soothed or if you had to tip-toe around him.

Instead, he asked about your family and friends, your likes and dislikes. You compared notes about each of your rookie months at SVU, commiserating at the cliquish quality of the squad. He told you about his sisters, you described your thrice-divorced brother who was currently couch-surfing his way across Seattle.

It seemed like only a moment passed when the waiter brought the check, and Sonny was lightning-fast when he swiped it away from your hand. He looked hurt – genuinely hurt – that you’d even consider paying.

When he led you outside, he laid a gentle hand on the middle of your back, and you couldn’t ignore the spark his touch caused in you, even through the fabric of your dress.

Once outside, he hesitated. It was a gorgeous New York evening – warm but not muggy, bustling but not overbearingly loud. 

“There’s a gelato shop nearby,” he said. “Would you like to get some and go to the nearby park, maybe?”

You nodded, and since you were reluctant to end the evening, and since you loved gelato, you agreed.

You sat with your waffle cone on the swings at a tiny playground. Sonny sat in the swing beside you, working on his own gelato. Of all the wonderful things about him, you finally discovered something terrible: out of all the flavors at that gelato shop, he chose pistachio. He was obviously a monster. 

But a handsome monster. You watched him out of the corner of your eye as he stretched his long legs out in front of him, swinging back and forth a little as he ate his dessert. He almost looked like an overgrown child.

The silence between you was companionable now, not like the awkward silence when you first sat down for dinner. You finished your cone and balled up the napkin, tossing it towards a nearby trash can and missing by a mile.

“Don’t quit your day job,” Sonny teased as you went to pick up the litter and dispose of it. You feigned throwing it at him before you rejoined him on the swings.

The silence descended again, but after a while, Sonny cleared his throat. He obviously had something on his mind, but you waited for him to voice it.

“Y/F/N, can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” you teased, but he didn’t laugh.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but, uh…what was it about Nick?”

You were glad for the shadows in the park – they hid your burning face. You didn’t want to think about Nick too much. It didn’t hurt the way it used to, but it still stung. More than anything, you just felt stupid that you had wasted so much time on him. And you still felt hurt that you weren’t enough for him.

“It wasn’t all bad,” you finally answered. “I guess part of it was that I liked being needed, and Nick always needed help. But he helped me too. Did little things for me. Fixed little things around the apartment. And he used to bring me coffee and breakfast nearly every morning. Nothing elaborate, just a cup of coffee and a pastry from some little shop somewhere, always sitting and waiting for me on my desk when I came in.”

Sonny coughed beside you but didn’t reply. You peered at him in the darkness and noted how he refused to look back at you.

“Anyway, I have a theory that everyone should have one terrible relationship for the experience points, and that’s Nick.” You raised your hands in a helpless gesture, and Sonny stood up and tossed the rest of his cone in the trash. You took it at your cue and stood up also.

“I live nearby,” he said. “If you walk me to my place, I can drive you home.”

You laughed. “If you wanted a police escort home, all you had to do was ask.”

* * *

Sonny only lived three blocks from the park, but he walked slowly to make the evening last. He mulled over your answer about Nick. It checked out, you wanting to feel needed. He could identify with that feeling – his last two relationships had been little more than him taking care of needy women who couldn’t take care of themselves. 

It’s part of the reason he felt so attracted to you. Even in the middle of the Nick situation, you had your stuff together. 

But your ability to be a functional adult was only part of the attraction. He was painfully aware of the physical attraction as he walked beside you. Your dress was cute and not especially revealing, but he wanted nothing more than to run his palms up your legs, from your ankle and up over the curve of you calves and further upward. 

The two of you reached his building, and he came to stop in front of the storefront on the first floor. “This is me,” he said. “I live on the second floor. I’m parked around the side.”

You glanced up at the building, and he nearly missed it as you knitted your eyebrows together in deep thought. He recognized the look – you had it at work all the time when you puzzled out new cases.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, but you only narrowed your eyes and made that thoughtful hum you made that meant the gears were spinning in your head.

Finally, you remarked, “you live over a bakery.” It was a statement and not a question, and your voice sounded small.

“Yeah, it’s not bad. My place always smells like cake,” he joked.

“Is this a chain bakery?” 

Sonny thought about it. “Nah, I don’t think so. Pretty sure it’s just a family place. German, I think. They have a lot of stuff with umlauts in the name.”

“Heidelberg Bakery? Sounds Germanic to me.” You gave an irritated huff of bitter laughter. “I’m more of an idiot than I thought.”

Sonny turned and faced you, and he saw those gears spinning, and his heart sunk a little.

“Either Nick really loved me, and he drove all the way from his place to here and then back to the precinct…and that seems unlikely, all things considered.”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sonny replied, but he knew exactly what you meant. He didn’t think you’d notice, but that had been stupid on his part – you noticed almost everything. 

And if the same coffee and pastry were sitting on your desk every day, you were bound to wonder where they came from. The coffee cup was plain white, but the pastry came in the same blue and white checked waxed bag. Which matched the blue and white checked design around the window of the Heidelberg Bakery.

“Sonny,” you said, and your voice had a warning edge to it. You stared him down hard, and he felt pinned by your gaze.

“**Okay, it was me…so**?”

“Sonny, why are earth did you bring me breakfast every day?”

He shrugged. Because he liked you, and then he loved you, and he couldn’t stand to see you doing a million nice things for Nick and not having a single nice thing done for you. Because he loved the way your face lit up when you came in and saw it sitting on your desk, even if you didn’t know the truth of who had brought it to you. But he didn’t say any of that.

“But it stopped when Nick left,” you continued, confused. 

He shrugged again. “I still brought you coffee. I just made sure you knew it was me,” he replied. “I just thought…it’s stupid.”

“Try to explain it.” You crossed your arms and looked at him expectantly.

“I wanted you to have one nice memory about him, I guess. You were so sad and hurt…”

“But it was a lie, Sonny.”

He sighed and dropped his shoulders. “I didn’t mean to lie.”

“But why lie for him?”

He stared down at his feet, and he felt his heart sink even more. He couldn’t even get through one date without screwing it up. He had been so excited, and now any sort of thing between you was over before it even began. And as a terrible bonus, work would be awkward now.

When you finally spoke again, it was just to ask him to take you home, please. 

* * *

The ride home was uncomfortably silent again, and you didn’t know what to think. You were mad, mostly at yourself. The story about the breakfast fell apart the minute you started tugging the loose thread: of course it wasn’t Nick. He couldn’t even break up with you kindly. Of course it was Sonny all along. He was like a Disney princess brought to life and stuffed into a well-tailored suit and Apple watch. 

You should have noticed it all along. You wondered how much else had gotten past you.

And worst of all, you’d ruined your date with Sonny. You could feel the misery emanating from him as he drove you home.

He parked in front of your building, and there was a beat before either of you spoke.

“Sonny’s gonna be so disappointed that I screwed this up,” he said, and it would have sounded like a joke if he didn’t sound so despondent.

“Sonny,” you sighed. “Or Dominick. You didn’t screw anything up.” You turned a bit in your seat so that you were facing him, and you reached out a tentative hand and laid it on his arm. “Look, I just need to process this new information.”

“I understand,” he said, but he still sounded miserable.

“How about a re-do then? Tomorrow maybe, or next weekend?”

Sonny’s face brightened a bit, but he still sounded dismayed. “You don’t have to do that.” 

“I know that, but I want to. We’ll put a moratorium on any mention of Nick.” You squeezed his arm reassuringly until he turned to meet your gaze. “I had a really great time tonight, Sonny, right up until I realized that the one nice thing I thought Nick did for me was you the whole time.”

“You deserve nice things, Y/F/N.”

You smiled at him. “Then tell me when you’re free again and we’ll plan another date.”

He smiled back at you. “I’m free tomorrow night.”

“Good,” you replied. “You know my address now, apartment 420. It’s easy to remember because it’s the weed number.” He snorted at this, and you continued.

“Come by around 6 and I’ll make you dinner. I’m a fantastic cook.” You glanced at him and then added casually, “I know exactly how long to boil dry pasta until it’s nice and soft.”

It just further proved how sweet Sonny was – the man with strong, almost violent opinions on Italian food let your comment about awful boxed pasta slide, even though you noticed the wince that crossed his features. You were only kidding, but you knew if you served him boxed pasta with canned sauce, he’d choke it down with a smile and never say a word.

“That sounds great,” he said, and he finally had that patented Sonny cheer in his voice. You slid your hand down his arm until you were grasping his hand, and you leaned in to brush a kiss on his cheek. Even in the darkness of the cab of his truck you could see his ears turn pink.

* * *

Sonny got there half an hour early. He thought he might help you cook, but it didn’t occur to him until he was knocking on your door that you might not be ready.

That was half his problem when it came to dating. He was so thoughtful about some things but clueless about other things. It drove his ex-girlfriends crazy and baffled him, how his consideration sometimes backfired.

Your door swung open, and Sonny realized that you weren’t ready. You were dressed in another cute dress, but you were barefoot, and your hair was in a damp braid. But you grinned at him regardless and gestured for him to come inside, so you didn’t seem mad about it.

“These are for you,” he said, and he handed you a mixed bouquet that he spent too much time agonizing over. He didn’t know what your favorite color or favorite flower were, so he just had the florist put together a bit of everything. You grinned even wider at them and thanked him.

“Make yourself at home,” you said. “I have to finish getting ready.”

You disappeared into the back of your apartment, so Sonny cased the place. It was small but comfortable. You had a lot of shelves, a lot of books. He looked them over closer. He had no idea that you were such a prolific reader, but you had everything from poetry to thrillers to non-fiction. There was a small stack of literary journals, and (he noted with a smirk) two Harlequin-looking paperbacks, well-worn and half-hidden behind a handsomely bound copy of “Vanity Fair.”

You came back out, and he turned to face you. Your hair was still damp, but loose and wavy from being in a braid. You put on a pair of flats too.

“Dinner will be ready in about half an hour,” you told him. “I hope you grew up in a Prego home and not a Ragu one.”

Sonny almost felt like gagging, but he caught your sly smile. “You think you’re funny?” he asked. “My nonna would disown me if she found out I’d eaten jarred pasta.”

You walked past him and slapped his arm with the back of your hand. “No one is going to disown you, Saint Dominick,” you said. “Besides, I made lasagna. It might be controversial though. We’ll see.”

He followed you into your tiny kitchen, and you offered him a beer that he took gratefully. “How is it controversial?” he asked after he took a sip.

You cracked open the oven door to check it, and the smell that wafted out made Sonny salivate. “It’s homemade pasta with a béchamel sauce, mushrooms, and burrata.” You shut the oven and started on a salad that was sitting in a strainer in the sink. “You think your nonna would accept a lasagna that uses a mother sauce instead of tomato?”

Sonny laughed. “I think my nonna would be more concerned that I lock down the woman who can actually cook. My last girlfriend thought baking a frozen pizza qualified as cooking.”

“That’s a low bar for your nonna,” you said. You sliced a cucumber and tossed it in the salad.

“Well, I didn’t get married when I was seventeen, so she’s been in despair now that I’m aged and alone,” he joked. “I’m half afraid she’s gonna sign me up for one of those prison pen pal programs, just to get me a girl. One that’s locked up and can’t run away.”

You laughed and pulled out some dishes to set the table. “Well, for what it’s worth, I was arrested once in college for protesting a speaker at our university.” You glanced up and saw the look of surprise on his face and laughed again. “Never charged, Sonny.”

“I knew you were bad news, doll,” he replied with a smile, and then the timer went off, and you proceeded to dinner.

If Sonny already loved you, after eating your home-cooked meal, he knew he had to find a way to marry you someday. Your lasagna – not even from a recipe, just something you whipped up once – was amazing, the salad had homemade dressing, and you even mixed an excellent cocktail for each of you (“Bartended in grad school,” you said. “Big smiles and big cleavage meant big tips for those tuition bills.”) And for dessert? Homemade truffles. 

“Why on earth are you a detective if you can cook like this?” he asked, pleasantly full as he sat on your couch.

You shrugged and gave him a pleased smile. “It’s just a hobby,” you explained. “I don’t think I’d love it if my paycheck depended on it.”

“Well, my nonna would approve, I think.” He patted his stomach. “Though I’d get fat pretty quickly if I ate this well every day.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” you snorted. “You’re always bringing in pastries and cookies and cannoli to fatten up all of your co-workers.” 

“Here’s your revenge then,” and he popped another truffle into his mouth. It was delicious, chocolate with a hint of cherry liqueur, and before he could stop himself, he groaned obscenely, making you smirk at him.

He swallowed and washed it down with a sip of Moscato, and before he could stop his mouth again, he said, “Nick was an idiot to give this up.” By the time his ears heard what he said, he muttered an added, “ah, shit.”

When he glanced over at you though, you had your head tilted at him with a slight smile on your face. “You really have no control over your mouth, do you?” you asked. “I hate to say it, Sonny, but you might want to stick with NYPD. Can you picture yourself as an ADA? You’d be in contempt more often than not for just running your mouth.”

He felt like a complete idiot, but before he could lay out all of the ways he had to apologize, you leaned in and closed the gap between the two of you and pressed a kiss on his mouth. It was innocent – closed-mouth and soft, and it only lasted a second – but it made Sonny’s heart twist in that way that love did, painful but irresistible.

You pulled away and looked at him, your lips curved into a smile. “It’s okay, Sonny. Please don’t spend the next hour beating yourself up and apologizing.”

Maybe you knew him better than he realized.

He sat his wineglass down and then reached out a hand, laid it on the back of your head. He pulled you back to him, and he kissed you this time. He kept his mouth closed, but he pressed his lips more firmly to yours, relishing how soft your mouth was. 

You pulled away and smiled, and he could feel your lips curve against him. “This is a better use of your mouth, Dominick.”

He gave a little growl – hearing his given name in your mouth while you kissed him did something to him, and he pulled you back to him again. When he kissed you, he tilted your head and ran his tongue over the seam of your lips until you parted them with a sigh. He kissed you deeply, tasting the Moscato and the hint of cherry, and when you slid your own tongue into his mouth, a bit tentative, he groaned and pulled your body against his.

You were a solid weight on top of him, and with his free hand, he lightly skimmed your form, drifting over your hip and your lower back until it settled between the wings of your shoulder blades. You were trembling, almost imperceptibly, so he pushed his hand up the back of your neck and into your hair. He ran his fingertips along your scalp, hoping it would soothe you a bit.

Your hands were shaking a bit too. One arm braced you, holding some of your weight off of him, but your laid your other hand on his chest for a while until you reached up to lay your palm across the side of his face. 

It was a long moment together, your tongues pressing against each other, swallowing each other’s moans, nervous hands touching but too shy to drift to the places where they really wanted to touch.

You both broke apart, a bit breathless. Sonny looked you over and smiled at the deep blush that had broken out across your face, and he could feel his own flush burning. He tugged his fingers through your hair and grinned at you.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he confessed.

You laughed lightly. “Ever since you saw me shirtless in the locker room?”

Sonny acted offended. “I turned my back when you changed!” He glanced at you and added, more seriously, “but I wanted to kiss you long before that. When you were…” But you cut him off by kissing him again.

You were bolder now. Maybe it was the threat of hearing Nick’s name again, but you sucked on his bottom lip and nipped him until he groaned. He was hard underneath you and wanted nothing more than to squirm a bit, relieve some of the tension, but he didn’t want to seem ungentlemanly. It was only your second date, and while he didn’t have rules around hooking up, he didn’t want to be pushy. 

Actually, he did have one rule about hooking up, but he blew past it long ago because he had loved you for a while now. Ideally, you’d love him too, but he knew you were still too hurt about Nick.

You moved from his mouth to his neck, leaving wet, open-mouthed kisses down his neck and across the part of his throat exposed by his collar, and up the other side of his neck. He groaned again, and when you pulled away to look down at him, there was a question in your eyes.

“Sonny, what do you want to do?” you asked softly.

He stuttered. “I don’t…I mean…whatever you want…”

You shook your head at him, a bit sadly. “Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. Saint Dominick.” You laid your hand back on the side of his face, and he leaned into your touch. “If that coffee hadn’t exploded on me that day, would you have ever said anything? Would you have ever asked me out?”

He didn’t want to lie, so he didn’t. “Probably not.”

“Why not?” He couldn’t meet your gaze, and you shifted your hand to his jaw and tilted his head until he couldn’t look away. When he couldn’t respond, you continued.

“You say I deserve nice things. What do you deserve, Sonny?” You read something in his eyes, because you widened your own eyes a bit, and he saw you make a working theory in your head. “Do you not think you deserve to be happy, Sonny?”

He sighed and pushed you back gently until he was sitting up again. “It’s hard, Y/F/N, the work we do. We see so much suffering, sometimes it’s hard to think I can be happy. That I deserve it when so many people will never be happy.”

You settled beside him and threaded your fingers through his. “That’s exactly why we should be happy, Sonny. We have to grab it when we have the chance because it can seem so rare.”

Your hand was warm in his. Sonny could feel his heart hammering in his chest. Growing up Catholic, everything seemed to be about feeling guilty, not feeling good enough. His parents unconsciously reinforced that: being a cop wasn’t good enough, going to college wasn’t good enough. He didn’t even tell his ma that he’d been accepted to college until a few days before the start of classes.

Bouncing from precinct to precinct didn’t help either. 

“Besides, you make so many people happy, Sonny,” you added. “Don’t you deserve a bit for yourself?”

Reluctantly, he nodded.

“So I’ll ask again,” you said softly. “What do you want?” You squeezed his hand, and Sonny turned to you with a smile.

“I want you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted in Tumblr as part of a five-word prompt ask.
> 
> The prompt requested was: Okay, it was me...so?


	4. Chapter 4

You didn’t sleep with Sonny that night. You definitely wanted to, but something made you slow down. Maybe it was his admission that he didn’t feel like he deserved to be happy. Maybe it was how he see-sawed between eagerness and hesitation. He seemed to want to be with you, and he seemed to expect you to hurt him. You wanted to make sure that when you finally slept together, he knew it was because you wanted him – not because he was some convenient rebound. 

So instead of sleeping with him that night, you cuddled up against him on your couch and just talked. And you got to the bottom of some of Sonny’s hesitation – he had a lengthy history of terrible first dates. 

Once he got started talking, it was hard to stop him. There was a date in the eighth grade at an arcade where the girl he came with left with another boy. There was a Yankee game in high school where the girl ghosted him after the fourth inning. There was the date in college when Sonny, trying to act like a grown-up, took a girl to a jazz club. The date was going well, he told you, until the woman let slip that she only was on a date with him to make her real boyfriend jealous.

“And then I screwed up our first date,” he said. He sounded so sad that you couldn’t help but press a kiss to his mouth before you pulled away.

“You didn’t screw it up,” you admonished him. “Besides, you ended up with a second date, so that doesn’t seem like a failure to me.”

He turned and gave you a look that reminded you of a dog in an animal shelter commercial, giant blue eyes and a pout. “But will I get a third date?”

You laughed at him. “Definitely.”

You sent him home shortly thereafter (with the leftover lasagna, after he tap-danced around asking for an extra piece to take home), and then you sat up for a while, thinking. Sonny was so selfless and sweet, and he seemed to never have much nice done for him in return. You decided to plan the third date that you promised him.

* * *

All you had told Sonny was to dress casually. “Not date-casual,” you told him. “I’m talking jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers.” He started to protest, but you cut him off. “If you aren’t dressed like a boy in middle school, I’m going to call your grandmother and tell her that you were seducing me with breakfast strudels instead of cannoli.”

On Friday night, Sonny found himself waiting in his apartment, dressed in the nicest jeans he had, the cleanest sneakers he had, and a plain t-shirt that he hoped made him look like an adult instead of like a boy. He had to do his hair twice – his usual gel-and-style did not match his attire at all, so he rinsed out all the product and left it more natural.

There was a knock on his door promptly at seven, and he opened the door to you. You were in jeans and canvas sneakers too, and a Backstreet Boys tour t-shirt. Your face was bare of makeup (that he could see), and your hair was pulled up into a high ponytail. You looked almost criminally young, especially when paired with the toothy grin you had plastered across your face.

“C’mon,” you said. You grabbed his hand and tugged him into the hallway towards the stairs. “Our ride is waiting.”

But instead of a taxi standing on the curb, there was a beat-to-hell minivan with a bemused looking older woman in the driver’s seat. You climbed into the middle row, though, so Sonny followed suit, even though he was completely baffled. 

You were silent for the ride, so Sonny held his tongue, and in short order you were dropped at a corner in the Lower East Side. The driver leaned across the passenger’s seat to call out to you, “I’ll pick you up here at eleven,” before she drove off.

“Doll, I have no idea what’s going on,” Sonny said. 

You smiled and took his hand again. You tugged him down the street towards some unknown destination. “It’s a re-do,” you explained. “Your first date with a girl in the eighth grade at the arcade.”

Sonny faltered in his steps, and you stopped beside him. “What do you mean?” he asked.

You bit your lip and thought for a moment. “Well, you brought me breakfast every day and let me believe it was Nick,” you explained. “You were giving me happy memories. I thought maybe I could do the same thing. You had bad first dates, so I thought we could re-do them. I wanted to give you a happy memory.”

Sonny felt an unexpected sting of tears in his eyes that he covered up by looking down the street. He cleared his throat. “So eighth grade…”

“Eighth grade,” you agreed. You gestured down your front. “Hence the Backstreet Boys. And our driver was my neighbor. She has a mini-van, and I paid her fifty bucks to drop us off and pick us up.” You grinned at him. “Because we are thirteen and don’t have driver’s licenses.”

The tears threatened again, and Sonny didn’t bother to hide them. He thought back to his first date, and it felt both a million years ago and just yesterday. He remembered being so excited to go out with a girl – Leah – and he remembered feeling so adult to plan out an evening together. 

He also remembered the humiliation when Leah left with another classmate, and the mortification when his mother picked him up later, alone. 

“Doll, this is too much,” he protested weakly, but you shook your head at him.

“It’s exactly what you deserve.” You started walking, pulling on his hand, and he followed. “Cheap pizza and video games,” you added with a laugh.

Dinner was at a little pizzeria. You both used a ton of napkins to mop up the grease that pooled on the slices, and you skipped the special on a PBR pitcher and stuck with soft drinks (“because we’re underaged” you whispered to Sonny). Getting into the spirit of it, Sonny ordered a Mountain Dew, remembering how he was fueled by it back in middle school.

After that, you walked him across the street to a retro arcade where you paid for two all-access passes that got you unlimited plays. Sonny immediately made a beeline to Street Fighter II, and you watched him bemusedly until you found a console of Burger Time in the corner that you camped out at for a while.

Then the two of you played Gauntlet together, you shoving him lightly when he accidentally shot your with arrows. The night flew by, and before he knew it, you were glancing at your watch and telling him that “your mom” would be on her way. You both left the arcade and started walking towards the pickup point.

“Did you have fun?” you asked him, and Sonny could only throw an arm around your waist and try to tug you to him for a kiss. Which you dodged in mock-horror.

“Whoa,” you said, taking a dancing step away from him. “Were you that forward when you were thirteen, Sonny?”

He laughed at this. “Seriously?”

You batted your eyes at him. “I have a crush on Keanu Reeves, and I’m probably going to marry him when I’m older, but if you ask nice, I’ll let you kiss me.”

“Please may I kiss you?” Sonny said immediately, and you pretended to think about it before nodding. 

He stepped up to you and put his hands on your shoulders, then dipped his head and captured your mouth with his. He could feel your lips curving into a smile against his mouth, so he pulled away. 

“What?” he asked, but you shook your head sadly.

“Sonny, I was thirteen once, and I kissed a thirteen year old boy once. It did _not _go like that at all.”

Sonny pulled you back to him, dipped his head again, and as soon as his lips touched yours, he plunged his tongue straight into your mouth with zero finesse and skill. You pulled away, laughing so hard that Sonny couldn’t help but chuckle too.

“You taste like Mountain Dew,” you said between peals of laughter. “But that felt about right.”

Your neighbor picked you both up a minute later, and when the mini-van stopped at Sonny’s place, you stayed in the vehicle. 

“I’d come up with you,” you said apologetically. “But I have an algebra test tomorrow.”

He could only wave goodbye as the automatic door slid shut, but when he went into his building, he took the steps to the second floor two at a time with a lightness in his steps.

You planned the next date too, and Sonny found himself at Yankee Stadium on a Saturday afternoon as they faced off against the Orioles. You looked like the girl next door again, in short jean shorts and those canvas sneakers. Your t-shirt looked like a Yankees shirt, but when he looked closer, it just said “Local Sports Team” on it, making him smile.

You took the B train to the stadium and settled into a pair of nosebleed seats. You shrugged at Sonny and explained that you didn’t have a lot of money to spend from your baby-sitting job, but you had enough for a few hot dogs and sodas. 

Sonny placed an arm over the back of your seat, and you obviously felt that was high-school appropriate because you didn’t fight him on it. It was hot and humid, but a nice breeze came through often enough to keep it from being miserable. And Sonny thought he’d go through any weather to spend time with you.

No woman had ever been so thoughtful with him, and it made him feel pleasantly pleased at the attention. It made him feel seen.

At the start of the fourth inning though, you stood up and left your seat, promising to come back, but you were gone the entire inning, and Sonny remembered the original date. Another humiliation, another moment where he felt like he wasn’t enough. He started to wallow, but you reappeared just then. You had a giant soft pretzel, almost as big as your head.

“Sorry I was gone so long. The line was insane,” you said. “Want to split this?”

After the game, you took the subway and then walked back to your place, and Sonny tried to think about what he would have done in high school. Raised Catholic, he probably wouldn’t have had sex even if the option had been there – he was still too guilty and felt like a disapproving god was watching him from above. Hell, he couldn’t even masturbate back then (or now, really), without feeling a flush of shame wash over him.

The two of you ended up on your couch, doing what his childhood priest would sternly call “heavy petting.” You were stretched out underneath him, one of your legs hanging off the edge of the couch, while you made out feverishly. Sonny’s hands roamed over your form, but he had to keep it over your clothes because you smacked him every time he tried to sneak his fingers under a hem. You kept your own hands on his biceps or shoulders, letting them drift between the two locations on his sweat-dampened t-shirt.

He felt like a teenager again, and he rolled his hips against you in a languid motion to relieve some of the tension below the belt. You seemed to enjoy it too, judging from the soft moans that you let slip every so often. Sonny chuckled against you. You pulled back a bit.

“What’s so funny?” you asked, and he laughed again.

“I just never thought that I’d be dry humping a girl at my age,” he replied.

You made a face. “I hate that term,” you informed him. “It sounds like something a dog would do to a couch cushion. Call it ‘outercourse,’ please.”

“I never thought I’d be outercoursing a girl at my age,” he amended, and then he leaned back down to kiss you more, sliding his tongue into your mouth.

You shifted underneath him just a bit, and when Sonny felt that nearly unbearable tension again and resumed rolling his hips against you, you moaned louder. You were perfectly placed under him, and if you were both naked, he’d be inside you – the thought alone made him feel dizzy. He knew that you were holding off sleeping with him for some reason or another. He didn’t press the issue, and you didn’t elaborate your reason to him. He worried that you were still hung up on Nick, but if that were the case, why were you going to such effort for him?

But he realized with a start that you were starting to press back against his gentle thrusts, and even with the layers of clothing between you, he might be able to make you come just from the pressure and friction alone. The thought made him even harder, which he didn’t think was possible, so he rolled his hips harder and plunged his tongue into your mouth in time with his thrusts.

You turned your head to the side, breaking the kiss. “Sonny,” you whined, and he wasn’t sure if you were telling him to stop or to keep going.

“Is this okay?” he asked against your neck. He pressed a kiss to the side of your neck, darting his tongue out to taste the salt of your sweat. 

“Sonny,” you repeated. One of your hands drifted from his shoulder across to his back, fisting his damp t-shirt in your fist. “Would you have done this in high school?” you asked as you panted underneath him.

“With you? Absolutely,” he replied. He moved against you again, drawing another moan from you. “Though I definitely wouldn’t have understood a girl having an orgasm when I was sixteen.”

You huffed out a breathless sort of laugh. “We should stop then,” you said with a groan. “Keep it authentic.”

Sonny kissed your neck again, sucking against your soft skin. “We should keep going instead,” he murmured against you. “Authentic would have been you dumping me at the game.” He pulled back and looked down at you. Your face was flushed from a day in the sun and from desire, and your lips were swollen from kissing. You looked gorgeous, and Sonny felt that too-familiar twist of love in his chest.

You surged up and kissed him gently on his cheek, then laid a hand over the side of his face too. “I didn’t have an orgasm until college, Sonny,” you said with a smile. “I didn’t even know what ‘orgasm’ meant in high school.”

“I did,” he replied with a grin, and you laughed underneath him.

“And I thought you were the good Catholic boy,” you teased. You put your hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently off of you until you were both sitting side by side, Sonny surreptitiously trying to hide his obvious erection.

“Well, I felt guilty about it, doll. Nothing more Catholic than that.”

Sonny only stayed long enough to calm down, and then he ordered a car and left, but not before setting a date for your next get-together.

Now that Sonny was onto the game you were playing with your dates, he just went ahead and told you the name of the jazz club that he went to in college in a vain attempt to impress his date. He picked you up at your apartment, and you looked like a vision in a dark blue wrap dress and heels. Your hair was down, but there was a silk flower tucked behind one ear.

The jazz club was pretty much the same, just a bit more dingy than he remembered. You each ordered old-timey cocktails and sat beside each other in a dim corner. Sonny laid his arm around your shoulders, and you cuddled up against him and placed a soft hand on his thigh. 

The jazz was awful, or at least, Sonny didn’t understand it as a musical genre. There was no discernable melody that he could follow, and it sounded like when Bella was young and started piano lessons and would just bang the keys at random. You felt the same way because two drinks in, you leaned against him and whispered in his ear.

“Want to get out of here?”

“You sure, doll?” he asked. 

You nodded and winced as the flautist hit a particularly piercing high note. “This music could qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention, I think.”

You both ended up at his place, making out in a way that felt familiar now. When Sonny tried to progress to another plane, however, you still smacked his hands away lightly. And when he whined, needy, against you mouth, you grinned at him. 

“It’s college, Sonny. I didn’t have sex until after college.”

Sonny was incredulous. “Seriously?”

You nodded. “I was terrified of sex, honestly. I always wanted to, but I’d get cold feet at the last minute because I envisioned getting pregnant or some exotic STD.” You shook your head. “Our college’s health clinic usually assumed that whatever was ailing you was an STD. I remember having strep throat once and getting a pamphlet about gonorrhea.”

Sonny wanted to ask about your first time: when and where and, most importantly, which man convinced you that he was a safe bet when other men hadn’t been. He was already jealous of this unknown guy, and he worried that it had been Nick. It couldn’t have been, though. Or could it?

You didn’t sense his roiling emotions though, and instead you just curled up against him and nodded off after a while. You’d both had a few long weeks at SVU with mandatory overtime due to being understaffed, and Sonny felt his own eyes growing heavy.

“Doll, do you want to stay the night?” he asked softly, and you stirred against him. “We don’t have to do anything other than sleep.”

You sat up. Your face was creased from being pressed against his shirt, and Sonny couldn’t resist reaching out to run his finger down it.

“Would that be okay?” you asked. “Or would it be too tempting?”

He pulled you against him and kissed your temple, breathing in the smell of your shampoo. “You’re too tempting just walking around the bullpen in your work outfits,” he murmured. “But I’ll behave.”

You were in the bullpen early a few morning after your jazz club date. Fin and Rollins were off duty, and Liv was at 1PP for some bureaucratic meeting. Sonny arrived about ten minutes after you, and he placed a coffee and pastry on your desk in front of you with a wink.

Dating Nick, if you could have even called it that, had felt like work a lot of the time. The guys you dated before him were much the same: tons of effort to read and manage their moods, constantly waiting and then rushing depending on what they needed. Waiting around for them to need you, rushing to get there when they did. You realized sadly that you probably had never had a healthy relationship before.

Nothing about dating Sonny felt like a chore, not even planning those dates. And if they had felt like work, it would have been worth it to see his face light up. You wondered if Sonny had ever been in a healthy relationship before. 

You hoped against hope that maybe you could be that for each other.

You sipped your coffee and tried not to wolf down the cherry strudel that was still so warm that the icing had been absorbed into the flaky pastry. After you were done (and after you licked your fingers on the sly), you made your way over to Sonny’s desk and sat on the edge.

“Detective Carisi,” you said formally. “Any plans this weekend?”

He leaned back in his chair and grinned at you, the corners of his blue eyes crinkling. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m kinda seeing this girl.”

“Ah.” You nodded knowingly. “Dominick mentioned that you were dating someone. How’s it going?”

He played along, but his eyes were soft. “It’s going really well,” he admitted, his voice a bit lower. “How’s it going with Dominick?”

“Also really well.” 

“Look at the two of us, doing really well.”

You smiled at him for a moment, enjoying the playful conversation. “I was thinking. If you’re free on Friday, would you like to re-do our first date? Meet you at the same place, bring me another flower…”

Sonny knitted his eyebrows together. “Seriously?”

You nodded. “You’ve said at least twice that you screwed up that date, and even if I don’t agree with your definition of ‘screw up,’ I’m happy to do a do-over. You wear the same outfit, I’ll wear the same dress.” You turned and looked around the bullpen to make sure it was still empty except for the two of you. “But maybe I’ll wear something different underneath,” you murmured and raised what you hoped was a suggestive eyebrow. 

Sonny groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Doll, I can’t handle anymore cold showers,” he said. “You can’t say stuff like that to me at work.”

You stood up straight and shook a finger at him in pretend remonstration, but you loved how flushed he got at the merest hint of dirty talk. “Pull yourself together, detective. And meet me on Friday, same time and same place.”

True to your word, you wore the same fit-and-flare dress, dressing it down with the same white Keds. And underneath, a set of lingerie that walked the slender line between sweet and sexy, in rosy pink. You’d never admit it to Sonny because it would only embarrass him, but it matched the color he turned when he blushed.

True to his word, he turned up in the same clothes, and you each ordered the same dishes and recreated to the best of your memories your conversation. After you ate, Sonny led you outside, placing the same gentle hand on the middle of your back to lead you out. And he asked if you wanted gelato.

Since you were fixing mistakes in Sonny’s dating past, you placed your gelato order and waited. When he started to order pistachio, you placed a silencing hand on his arm and tried to stop him.

“Pistachio?” you asked in a teasing lilt. “Who orders that flavor other than old people?”

“I like it,” he replied only a little defensive. 

“Sonny, I love you, but _pistachio_?” you asked again. “Seriously? There’s so many better options…” You gestured at the menu board with its myriad of choices.

He made a strange face at you, and you worried that your teasing had hit a sore spot, but he turned after a beat and ordered mango instead. The two of you went to the same park and sat on the swings while you ate in companionable silence, and instead of asking about Nick, Sonny just ate his gelato thoughtfully and didn’t say a word.

When you were both finished, he gave you the same line about walking him home, and you threaded your arm through his and walked the few blocks to his place. When you saw the bakery, you simply said that their pastries were amazing and thanked him again for bringing them to you nearly every morning.

And instead of asking him to drive you home, you asked him to take you to his home. And he did.

Once you were inside his apartment, he suddenly seemed nervous, fidgeting with his keys before he sat them down on a small table in his entryway. Then he ran his hands through his hair, over and over in a motion that looked nearly obsessive.

You reached out and took his hands in yours, stilling them. “Hey,” you said softly. “We don’t have to do anything.”

He gazed at you with his bright blue eyes before responding. “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

He coughed a bit and his ears turned pink, and you smirked a bit to see it. “What you said at the gelato shop,” he clarified. “Did you mean it?”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “Well, pistachio was my grandpa’s favorite flavor…”

He cut you off with an impatient grumble in his throat. “No, the other thing you said.”

You thought back, trying to remember what you’d said. Then it hit you. “**I said I love you**.” You looked at him, saw the hope and the dread written plainly across his face in equal measure. “Oh, Sonny…”

“It’s okay if you don’t mean it,” he rushed in. “I mean…”

You rocked up onto your sneakered toes and kissed him, cutting off his words. When you pulled away, you smiled up at him. “I think I’ll just have to be prepared to kiss you every time I think you’re about to say something you’ll regret.” Then the smile slipped off your face and you turned serious. 

You reached up with both hands and placed them on either side of his face so that he couldn’t turn away from you. “Sonny, I do love you. You’re a very easy person to love, though.” He scoffed at you, so you kissed him again, relishing the feel of his soft lips against yours.

You could have listed out all the reasons you loved him. You could have added more, but Sonny kissed you back, more urgently. It was one of the most difficult things you’d ever done – delaying intimacy with Sonny – but you wanted to make sure he was absolutely certain that he wasn’t a rebound. You broke the kiss to tell him as much.

“I want you to know that I want you for you,” you said seriously. Your hands, still on his face, shifted to the back of his head until they were tangled in his hair. “You are not just a convenient hook-up.”

“I know, doll,” he whispered back, but you still saw a shadow of doubt in his blue eyes, and you sighed.

“You don’t believe me,” you said as a statement of fact, and Sonny shook his head but you knew you were right. “I’ll have to show you then.”

You took his hand and led him to the back of his apartment until you found his bedroom. You pulled him into the room and shut the door behind him. You took his hand, still clasped in yours, and raised it to your mouth. You pressed a chaste kiss to the back of his hand, and then told him, “I love your hands, Sonny. I love the way they feel when they’re touching me.”

He narrowed his eyes at you like he was trying to figure out if you were teasing him, so you continued. You helped him remove his blazer. You reached up with slightly shaking fingers and unbuttoned his checked shirt, then pushed it off of his shoulders too. Then you untucked the hem of his undershirt, glancing up in permission and noting his slight nod. He helped you pull it over his head, and it tousled his hair even more.

“I love your heart, Sonny.” You pressed your palm over where his heart was thudding, strong and steady. “I love how much care and concern you have for the victims you work with, and I love how kind and thoughtful you are.”

You looked up and saw him blushing deeply, but he looked oddly pleased at the praise. You always guessed he had a praise-kink, and it looked like you were right.

You drew you hand over his chest, brushing against his nipples. He drew a hitching breath as you did. “I’m only so-so on your nipples,” you joked. “Average, at best.”

He let out a surprised bark of laughter, and you giggled with him. You pushed him gently towards his bed until he sat down. You pulled off his shoes and socks and examined his feet. “Feet are nice,” you told him with a grin. “I could love these.”

“They’re pretty good on the dance floor,” he replied, and you crawled on top of him until you were straddling him. His hands hesitated, then came to rest lightly on your hips.

“You going to take me dancing, Sonny?” He nodded eagerly, and you shook your head. “Make sure it’s to music with a beat. No free-form jazz.”

He laughed again. You sat up on him, holding yourself up a bit so that you were lightly settled over the bulge growing underneath you. You reached down with a hand and ghosted it over his face, drifting from feature to feature.

“I love your eyes – how blue they are and how I can read your emotions in them.” He closed his eyes as you drifted a finger over his lids, gentle as a night breeze.

“I love your cheeks and ears, and how flushed you get when you’re embarrassed or happy.” He opened his eyes again as you touched his sharp cheekbones and then tugged on the lobe of one of his ears.

“I do not,” he said, defensive. 

“No?” You leaned forward a bit, bringing your face closer to his so that you could stare into his eyes. “So if I told you that I want you to fuck me senseless, nothing would happen?”

Three things happened: you felt Sonny harden even further against you, and you heard him groan as his face turned bright red. You dipped your head and kissed him gently, working your lips against him and enjoying the groans you were drawing from him.

You broke away. “I love your mouth, by the way. I love how it gets you in trouble and how it gets you out of trouble.”

“Do you prefer any particular way it gets me out of trouble?” he said, and his accent was notably thicker. You ran a finger over his pink lower lip.

“I’d love for you to surprise me, Dominick,” and you noted how his blue eyes darkened at your use of his first name. 

You ran your hands through his hair, mussing it even further. “I love your hair, too. But more than that, I love what’s underneath it. I love how smart you are, how funny.”

You ground yourself on him lightly the whole while, and he bucked his hips involuntarily against you. “Anything else?” he asked, his voice husky.

“Hmm,” you pretended to think. You hoisted yourself off of him, and you unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his jeans. He looked down at you through hooded lids, and you noted the hitched quality of his breathing. He raised his hips up enough for you to pull off his jeans, leaving him in only his tented boxer briefs.

“You need to catch up, doll,” he said in a strangled voice, so you kicked off your Keds and pulled your dress over your head, revealing the lingerie you’d bought for Sonny. 

It had its intended effect. Sonny sat up and reached for you, placing his hands on your hips before sliding them around to cup your ass. He pulled you closer to him and buried his face against your bare stomach. You could feel his pillowy lips pressed to you, his hot breath…you drew your hand through the hair on the back of his head and tugged him away until his blue eyes were gazing up at you.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, and coming from his mouth, it was the first time you believed it. You let him pull you into his lap, straddling him again, and he moved his mouth to the mounds of your breasts, pushed up to obscene heights by the pink lace and wire of your bra.

You scratched his scalp and pulled his hair lightly as he kissed your breasts: pressing gentle kisses along the exposed skin at the top, then kissing harder through the lace until he was sucking against first one nipple, then the other. The wet lace and the pressure from his mouth made them grow hard, and he bit them lightly, pressing the edges of his teeth against them until you moaned at the faint sting of pain. Then he soothed them with his mouth again until you moaned louder.

“Sonny,” you said. “I had a whole thing worked out, and you’re distracting me…” You bit off the last sentence with a groan as he reached up with one hand to pull the cup of your bra down. He moved his head lightning fast, and his warm mouth was on you again. His tongue worked against your nipple, and your hips ground against him.

“I thought you liked my mouth,” he mumbled, and the vibration from his words sent another shard of desire straight to your core. 

“I love your mouth,” you replied. “There’s just other parts of you I still haven’t met yet.” You rolled your hips against him so that he was crystal-clear on your meaning, and he responded by swiveling you around on the bed. You scooted up until your head rested on a pillow, and he stretched himself alongside you.

He kissed your urgently, and his lips worked against your mouth until your lips were parted. He slid his tongue into you, licking against your mouth, and you pressed your own tongue against him. His hands roamed your body without clear meaning, cupping your breasts and thumbing your nipples before they stuttered their way down to your panties. He cupped your mound there and groaned when he felt how wet you were through the fabric.

He rubbed you through the lace, his finger slipping along your slit. “What’s this, doll?” he whispered.

“It’s all for you, Dominick,” you panted against him. Hearing his name spurred him on, and he toyed with the hem of your panties before slipping a finger underneath to resume his stroking.

You’d waited so long for him, and you were afraid you weren’t going to last very long. You could already feel an orgasm approaching.

“Please, Sonny,” you begged him. You should hate how whiny you sounded, but you were beyond care at this point. All you could focus on was Sonny – his swollen pink lips, his mussed hair, his fingers dipping into you and teasing you.

He obliged by pulling his hand away altogether, and he sat up and removed his boxer briefs. He reached into his bedside table and found a condom. You unhooked your bra and slid out of your panties while he tore open the foil and rolled the condom on himself, and you felt your mouth go dry when he turned back to you.

His blue eyes were dark with desire, and he crawled over you and lowered his weight onto you, pressing you into his mattress. He leaned down and kissed you again, full of passion, his tongue plunging into your mouth as he swallowed your moans. His cock was a heavy weight pressed against your hip, and you opened your legs to him. He broke the kiss at this and gazed down at you.

“You sure, doll? You sure you want to do this?”

You reached up and stroked his flushed face. “I’m sure I want you, Sonny. I love you.”

He groaned at this and reached down to line himself up with your entrance. “Say it again,” he pleaded, so you told him, over and over as he slid himself into you slowly. Once he was buried to the hilt, he shuddered, but then he kissed you firmly and replied, “I love you too.”

He set a languid pace, unhurried as he pulled out partway and paused before sliding back into your slippery depths. He kissed you as he fucked you gently, and you whimpered at the sensation of being filled by him in both your core and your mouth. He only broke away to catch his breath and pause in his thrusts, and you knew he was trying to make it last for both of you.

You were less patient. You’d been running in a state of perpetual horniness from all of your dates with him, and the pleasant tension in your belly was almost unbearable. You drew one leg up and wrapped it around his waist, changing the angle just a bit. Sonny didn’t get the hint – or ignored it – and continued his unhurried thrusts.

“Sonny…” you whined against his mouth. “Please.”

He huffed against you. “I don’t want this to end,” he breathed. 

You laughed, a bit breathless. “Sonny, when it ends, we can always go again.”

He pretended to think about it. “Sold,” he said. He picked up the pace a bit then, thrusting into you with more force. You could feel him dragging along your entrance, delivering a delicious bit of friction to your swollen nub. 

“Just like that,” you exhaled into his ear. “You feel so good, Dominick.”

He groaned at the praise and went a bit faster and harder, and you spurred him on with your words and your moans, and before you knew it, the tension in your belly snapped in an explosion of white stars behind your eyelids, and you raised off the bed to arch against him. 

“Fuck, Sonny,” you wailed, and his thrusts grew irregular and hard as he chased his own orgasm and fucked you through yours. Your legs trembled underneath him, and you felt your core clenching him as waves of pleasure crashed through you. He shouted your name and came too, shuddering against you before he collapsed on top of you. He buried his head against your neck, and you felt his panting breath start to steady after a time. 

He raised his head to kiss you gently, then he gazed into your eyes. “I love you,” he said solemnly, so you repeated it back to him just as serious.

Sonny pulled out then, and he disappeared for a moment to clean up and dispose of the condom. When he returned, you had already turned down the bed and was tucked into his cool sheets. He slid in beside you, and you laid your head on his chest and listened to his solid heart beating underneath you.

“You ready to go again?” you asked playfully, and he chuckled underneath you.

“It might take me a minute. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

You propped yourself up on an arm and peered down at him. “You mean to tell me that the man who drank Mountain Dew and played Rampage on one of our dates is an old man?”

“I didn’t say I was old,” he scoffed. “I just said I wasn’t young.”

“Middle aged then.”

“No….”

“Due for a midlife crisis,” you cut off.

“No, I…”

“Gonna buy a pony car, find a secretary to seduce…”

He responded with a growl, flipping you onto your back and kissing you to silence you. He worked his mouth against you until you were breathless, and you felt him hardening against your hip. He broke away and you smirked up at him.

“That didn’t take long,” you noted.

“You have that effect on me,” he replied, but he smiled down at you with a strange expression on his face, and he pushed an errant strand of hair out of your face. “You do know I love you though, right? I’m not just in this for the, uh, physical stuff.”

“The sex?” You smiled to see him blush; he would probably always be an altar boy at heart. “I know that, Sonny.” You reached down and stroked him, savoring the feel of him stiffening in your hand. “And I love you too.”

You pushed him onto his back and then crawled on top of him until you were straddling him. “Let me show you how much I love you.” And you did, that night – and every night after. Not always physically, but you always made sure you told him – and showed him – how much you loved him. And he did the same for you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted in Tumblr as part of a five-word prompt ask.
> 
> The prompt requested was: I said I love you.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted in Tumblr as part of a five-word prompt ask.
> 
> The prompt requested was: This isn't what I wanted.


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